yeast cake

Ingredients for 1 servings:

• 500 g flour
• 40 g yeast
• 200 ml milk
• 200 g butter
• 140 g sugar
• ½ tsp salt
• 4 eggs
• ½ lemon(s), zest, grated
• 150 g raisins
• 50 g currants
• 50 g almonds, chopped
• 50 g candied orange or lemon peel, to taste

Instructions

Working time approx. 1 hour 30 minutes; Cooking/baking time approx. 50 minutes; Total time approx. 2 hours 20 minutes

Yeast lump, panettone

Warm the milk in a covered saucepan on the stove until lukewarm, then turn off the stove immediately. Add one to two teaspoons of the sugar specified above and stir. Then crumble in the yeast and stir until mostly dissolved. Put the lid on and let stand on the switched off but still warm stove for about 20 minutes, until the yeast milk has expanded properly. Warm the butter until at least half liquid. (Ideal: metal bowl or small saucepan on a hotplate.) Separate the eggs into egg whites and yolks. Beat the egg whites with a mixer until stiff peaks form. Just before the egg whites are stiff peaks, gradually add half the sugar and mix until finished. Pour boiling water over the raisins and currants in a bowl until just covered. Mix the flour with the remaining sugar, add the salt, then the melted butter, the risen yeast milk, and finally the egg yolks, stirring initially with a wooden spoon. Then fold in the egg whites with a wooden spoon (i.e. mix carefully). Then mix everything well with the dough hook on the mixer and let it rise for about half an hour, ideally in a slightly warmed, but then switched off, oven, until the dough has increased in volume considerably. In the meantime, drain the raisins and currants and roll them in flour. Then grate the lemon zest over them and mix with the raisins. A squeeze or two of lemon juice can also be added to the dough later. After about half an hour, mix the dough well with the dough hook, gradually adding the raisins and candied orange peel. Mix well. Then continue stirring and gradually add the chopped almonds until everything is evenly distributed. Pour the batter into the buttered cake tin and let it rise for another half hour – ideally in a slightly warm oven. After half an hour, when the dough has visibly risen, turn the oven up to 180 to 200 degrees and bake for about 40 to 50 minutes. Once the cake has risen and is a dark brown, remove it from the oven and leave it in the tin for a few more minutes. Then spread baking paper on a wire rack, carefully turn the cake out onto it, and slowly lift the tin. Let the steam escape and let the cake cool completely. If you like, you can put the turned-out cake back in the oven on the rack after 10 minutes and bake it for another 10 minutes so that the top of the cake browns a little more (if it hasn’t already browned in the tin – this sometimes depends on the material of the tin). The cake is now ready. If you like, you can decorate it with powdered sugar or lemon icing. I like it best when it’s at least a day old. If it dries out a bit over time, it tastes even more savory. It goes well with plum jam.